Toronto’s downtown core population is booming, says a TD Bank report, and it’s due to the ‘Echo Boomers.’

Smart young urbanites choosing to live in Toronto's core are helping to drive the city's condo boom. This condo is on the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor Sts.

Published on Tue Jan 22 2013

There’s no hole in this doughnut — Toronto’s downtown is jammed. That’s the upshot of a new report showing a dramatic surge of smart, young urbanites choosing to live in the city’s core. This movement carries immense benefits (sweet!) but also some challenges. And city builders need to take it into account, especially when cooking up plans for expanded public transit and other services.

The report, entitled “Toronto — A Return to the Core,” comes courtesy of TD Economics and shows a remarkable tripling of central Toronto’s population growth rate in just five years. That outpaced population growth in the surrounding regions of Halton, York, Peel and Durham, “something that has not happened since the inception of those municipalities in the early 1970s,” writes economist Francis Fong, author of the report.

This runs counter to worry over the “doughnut effect” — a fear that Toronto will steadily lose jobs and dynamism to the regions that surround it — making this city the empty hole in a GTA doughnut. Contrary to that half-baked scenario, the downtown core is undergoing a remarkable resurgence.

The population of the core, defined as the ridings of Trinity-Spadina and Toronto Centre, jumped by 16.2 per cent between 2006 and 2011 while the GTA saw an increase of 13.7 per cent overall. And the people staying downtown are precisely the ones city builders most like to see. They’re called “Echo Boomers.” Born between 1972 and 1992, they tend to be younger than the average Ontarian, better educated and more committed to the amenities and faster pace of urban life.

They’re helping to drive a condo boom that has seen almost 50,000 units built, sold and occupied south of Bloor St. since 2000, says Fong. Thousands of additional units are on the way. And business is starting to follow, lured by a young, talented labour force.

“Employment has skyrocketed. Double-digit job growth in the downtown core between 2006 and 2011 heavily outpaced that in the surrounding suburbs,” Fong writes. “These trends represent a substantial turning point for the City of Toronto.”

But it’s not all crullers and cream. The eager young urbanites crowding into the core rely heavily on public transit, and a continued downtown population surge could overwhelm the city’s already struggling system. That’s why it’s vital that future transit expansion be done in a coherent way, without the ridiculous bickering and needless backtracking that has marred progress in recent years.

It’s also clear that the downtown is fast becoming a “neighbourhood” in the full meaning of the word. And no neighbourhood benefits from having a casino plopped down in its centre. (Even Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chair Paul Godfrey seems to agree with that.)(Even Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. chair Paul Godfrey seems to agree with that.) The crowded and thriving nature of Toronto’s core is yet another reason not to locate a gambling mega-complex here. It’s hard enough to move around. That’s worth bearing in mind as public consultations on a casino wrap up this week.

It’s not clear how long the Echo Boomer influx will last. As they get older and have children they might head off to the suburbs, just like their parents. Those parents, in turn, may go the other way, abandoning their empty nests and moving into a condo in the core. Either way, it’s vital that city builders get it right by providing more transit and other amenities so that more people — regardless of age — can keep our downtown booming.

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